Soviet Concept of Human Rights and Legal System
The Soviet conception of human rights was different from conceptions prevalent in the West. According to Western legal theory, "it is the individual who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be asserted against the government", whereas Soviet theory states that society as a whole is the beneficiary. Within the Soviet Union, emphasis was placed on economic and social rights such as access to health care, adequate nutrition, education at all levels, and guaranteed employment. The government of the Soviet Union considered these to be the most important rights, without which political and civil rights were meaningless.
It was argued in the West that the Soviets rejected the Western concept of the "rule of law" as the belief that law should be more than just the instrument of politics; the Soviet view on rights was criticized for considering the Marxist–Leninist ideology above natural law.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In The Soviet Union
Famous quotes containing the words legal system, soviet, concept, human, rights, legal and/or system:
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every bit as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro.... this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”
—Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, African American civil rights organization. SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)
“Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)